it never occurred to him,
not even late in the light of day,
he had paid scant attention
to birds

he heard the mourning doves
and saw a black ****** of crows scavenge
for crumbs at his feet at the outdoor cafe;
a crimson cardinal caught his eye, once

but most days he looked little
to the skies, and couldn't tell a wondrous warbler
from a fine finch--vultures and eagles were the same:
carrion eaters, high flyers

this, his avian compendium complete,
save hummingbirds he recalled outside his kitchen window
as a child, when his mother would bake bread
and fill the feeder with sugar water

the buzzing birds had caught his eye, until
his mother passed; then he failed to feed the tiny flock;
where they went he did not know, for he had little
wonder where winged creatures go

another one,
Burma, Indo-China
steamy burial grounds
for pilots who lost their way
or were clipped from the sky
by the ****

unfortunate chaps
who were picked clean
goggle-eyed skeletons when
we retrieved them--all so a family
a million miles gone could have
a closed casket of bones

then we got orders
to head north, to the passes
that sliced peaks too high for
our biggest birds, too cold
for fuel to burn with air
what little there was

we landed at a Tibetan strip
more slush than snow, and hiked
the full day to the site, bags for bones
on our shoulders, **** for brains it seems,
since the boys we found were frozen
solid, crisp as the day they died

two of them, staring through
a fine cockpit,  dead as dirt, but
preserved by the mountains' white
air, ready for redemption while we sat,
smoked, and puzzled how to haul
them whole from the heavens

in this pasture,
one hundred days past,
scores cheered as the current coursed
through Bundy's body

this evening, I am here,
solitaire, except for my *****,
the cattle, and the fireflies sprinkled
against the night

my spaniel nips
at the flies, but they are quick,
eluding her jaws to perform
a brilliant alchemy again

amidst this spectacle,
cows chew their cud, unperturbed, unaware
it seems, magical lightning comes without
thunder from these creatures

the bovines don't scatter
as I walk among them--perhaps they’ve forgotten
those revelers here on a crisp winter night, eager
to celebrate an extinguishing of light

the shelters were full
surely that is why I found her
in the alley

she was as old and white as time...
probably three score, at most, though curled up
like a babe in the womb

her eyes were yet open:
what had she seen last, what had
her last supper been?

and where were the disciples
with bread and wine, with body and blood
while she froze on the hard earth?

sleep deprived five dozen hours  
I am on a desert highway, without a nickel
my thumb begging for a ride which wouldn’t come
until dawn    

but I don’t know all that dark is ahead;
I only know the night is moonless, the cedars
the pinyons on the far mesas are moving like mournful buffalo,
long gone except in my waking dream  

on the road two eyes are all I see
green, sparkling as prisms of light in all that black,  
electrified ***** of mushy matter, glowing in sockets
in a canine skull    

I fear strange dogs
and other fanged beasts--I pray to a god
I do not know is there, imploring empty space
and dark matter for salvation    

it comes when the lights of a diesel  
birth, rear, and shrink the shadow of me  
and allow my vexed eyes to see, an asphalt stream
with nary a scary creature but I

six and one I saw, doubtless  
others were in the reeds    

the seven sensed I was there, and made their
pyramid wakes on the pond’s surface  

before taking flight to flee from me, a two-legged,
wingless, clumsy giant  

what fat, finite clump of cells in a mallard’s mind
commanded webbed feet to stir, wings to flap?  

somewhere, deep in pink folds in
their perfectly sculpted skulls  

hides a memory of what we flat earth
walkers hath wrought  

skewering them on crude sticks, roasting their flesh
on ancient, mystic pyres

spending time with you is like
being cast eternally as a character in
a Terrence Malick film, a narrator dictating
our every move, our scripts unfolding
in slow, mesmerizing motion

someone always has to die in these tales
and question the almighty's purpose, if there
be one, beyond birth and return to the earth;
the time between being swallowed
by our eyes, undigested

I am ****** in as well, slowly, by the lungs
of our creator, whose exhalations come as oceans of light,
though high tides recede to reveal dark shores,
our inevitable demise, before painful,
interminable resurrections